Martín Espada Not Here for Raúl Zurita Santiago de Chile, July 2004 The other poets tell me he tried to blind himself, taped his eyelids and splashed his face with ammonia. What Zurita saw gnawed like a parasite at the muscles in his eyes: Chile’s warships invaded the harbor of Valparaíso and subversives staggered at
Martín Espada The Republic of Poetry For Chile In the republic of poetry, a train full of poets rolls south in the rain as plum trees rock and horses kick the air, and village bands parade down the aisle with trumpets, with bowler hats, followed by the president of the republic, shaking every hand. In
Martín Espada How We Could Have Lived or Died This Way Not songs of loyalty alone are these, But songs of insurrection also, For I am the sworn poet of every dauntless rebel the world over. Walt Whitman I see the dark-skinned bodies falling in the street as their ancestors fell before the whip and
